AMMAN — The Department of Antiquities (DoA) has announced that the lead codices allegedly found in a northern Jordan cave between 2005-2007 have been proven forged. […]

The DoA Director General Monther Jamhawi said that the codices are a kind of “professional” forgery that was executed skillfully.

“This advanced counterfeit has created confusion as ancient materials were used, such as lead and stones, and inscribing them with ancient look-alike texts and drawings that are hard to be tested,” Jamhawi told The Jordan Times on Saturday. […]

The department formed a committee of researchers and epigraphists, who examined the books and confirmed that they were not authentic.

In its report, the taskforce concluded that the examination from an archaeological point of view proved that the metal books were false and worthless as they contained “irrelevant old letters and images” and that the manufacturer had no background about ancient inscriptions and their technical details or religious significance.

Or in other words, what most of us have been articulating since the beginning. 🙂

Using the LearnPress plugin, I’ve been able to more rapidly work on a bunch of stuff that was slow and difficult to handle before (when it came to making supporting multimedia, editing, or coding, coding, coding… it was off-putting). Now if I have an idea for a new lesson, I can put it together in a matter of hours instead of weeks, or if I have an idea for a new course, I can put it together in a matter of days, rather than months.

Right now it’s in BETA. That means it’s not complete, but it’s well on its way there, and that I also need your feedback to make it better. Visit the course page, sign up, try out the lessons and quizzes, and leave comments on the courseware.

Other courses I’m currently working on outlines for are the second level of this course (which will be more comprehensive), a re-do of the Lord’s Prayer course, and a course on the Sermon on the Mount. Once the Beta period is over for 101, we’ll see what direction these will go. 🙂

Context:

For those of you who are only casually familiar with what this is all about, Pope Francis made a suggestion about the traditional rendition of the Lord’s Prayer, specifically the phrase “lead us not into temptation.”

His argument was that, “It is not He that pushes me into temptation and then sees how I fall. […] A father does not do this. A father quickly helps those who are provoked into Satan’s temptation.”

His proposed solution was to alter the translation to, “Do not let us enter into temptation.”

The Language in Question:

The Greek, on its face, doesn’t seem to quite support this, using the word εἰσφέρω, which is usually rendered as “to lead into” or “bring into.” However, it is this word that is often used to translate the Aramaic verb עלל /’alal/ – and it is this verb that we see used in Aramaic renderings of the Lord’s Prayer (the Peshitta, the Old Syriac, and the Christian Palestinian Aramaic New Testament), as well as other similar petitions in other Jewish prayers.

Where it can mean and is extensively used to express “to bring in” the primary meaning of עלל, is “to enter.”

Because of this עלל is the verb I chose for my own reconstruction of the Lord’s Prayer, however even in doing so, the form I chose was assuming that the Greek had chosen the appropriate nuance.

The Conclusion:

“Do not let us enter into temptation” in my own opinion, is – when the original languages are taken into consideration – an appropriate translation of the Lord’s Prayer, and could quite possibly express the original intention of the petition.

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About the Author

Steve Caruso (MLIS) has translated Aramaic languages professionally for over 15 years with a focus upon the Galilean dialect – the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth. He is presently the Coordinator and Lead Faculty Member of the Interactive Digital Media Program at Raritan Valley Community College. Here on "The Aramaic New Testament," though, he keeps track of Aramaic in media and scholarship at large and continues his work on various Aramaic-related grants and projects.